133: Chapter 133 Global Surrender Queue! Invisibility Suit in Place, Swarm Begins Forging Fangs!

Pangu Laboratory, Level B2, 6:07 PM.

Su Che crouched beside the output end of the stealth material, holding an armor plate that had just come off the line.

It was unnaturally black.

Light hitting it didn't reflect or scatter; it was simply devoured.

Compared to the air next to it, the plate looked more like a rectangular hole.

"Yield rate?" Su Che handed the plate to the lab technician behind him.

"97.6 percent, consistent with the first batch."

Su Che nodded, stood up, and brushed the dust off his knees.

Qin Lan walked in quickly from the direction of the communication cabin, clutching a tactical terminal, and set it on the table as she approached the console.

"The summary is here."

Qin Lan turned the screen toward Su Che.

It wasn't a military briefing, but a classified bulletin from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

After the news of Takaishi Sayuki's ritual suicide spread globally, the chain reaction was three times faster than expected.

The first batch: the new Prime Minister of Sakura Country, Ichiro Yamanaka, a 62-year-old former diplomat from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, signed all seven surrender terms forty minutes after taking office and formally notified the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Long Country, requesting to send a surrender reception delegation.

The second batch: the Presidential Office of South Korea released a statement at 5:00 PM with extremely carefully chosen wording.

The core meaning, translated into plain language, was: We didn't really want to fight you; we were coerced by the US. Now we want to go home; can we just pretend nothing happened?

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs ignored them.

The third batch: seventeen belligerent nations from Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Europe collectively submitted armistice notes through Swiss diplomatic channels over the past two hours.

The wording varied, but the core demand was shockingly consistent: Stop fighting, we were wrong, you set the terms.

Su Che scanned the list, his expression unchanged.

"What about the US?"

"Silent." Qin Lan crossed her arms.

"The Pentagon has been in complete communication silence since 4:00 AM today, and there hasn't been any public statement so far."

"The remaining fleet has retreated to the waters off Guam, slowing to eight knots, as if waiting for orders."

Su Che pushed the terminal back.

"Let them wait."

He turned and walked back to the console, pulled out the keyboard, and continued to monitor the coverage progress of the stealth cloak.

The forty-two-meter verification section was 88 percent covered.

At this rate, it would be finished within two hours.

Lin Waner walked in from outside carrying an aluminum lunch box—a meal from the Military Science Commission cafeteria, with two meat dishes, one vegetable dish, and a bowl of soup.

She placed the lunch box on a small cleared space on the edge of the console and lifted the lid, letting the steam from the pork ribs stewed with potatoes rise up.

"Time to eat."

Su Che grunted in acknowledgment, shoveling rice with one hand while adjusting the temperature control parameters of the deposition equipment with the other.

Lin Waner sat down beside him, pulled a small notebook from her pocket, opened it, and continued writing.

Su Che glanced over.

It was the summer reading list she had compiled for the students at Su Family Village.

He lowered his head and continued eating without saying a word.

6:55 PM.

Across the ocean, in Washington.

The US Capitol, an emergency closed-door meeting.

Austin stood at the podium, his shirt collar unbuttoned, his tie nowhere to be found.

Sitting below were key members of the House and Senate, along with the National Security Advisor and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, totaling over forty people.

No one was looking at their phones.

The phones were full of bad news.

"Gentlemen." Austin cleared his throat.

"As of now, the total combat losses for Operation 'Judgment Day' are as follows."

"In terms of the Navy, seven carrier strike groups, twenty-one vessels sunk, the USS Reagan and the Carl Vinson have lost combat capability and are being towed back to Guam."

"In terms of the Air Force, all twelve B-21s in the formation returned safely, but it has been proven that they have absolutely no deterrent value against Long Country."

"The 'Oppenheimer' gravitational wave facility was destroyed by unknown means, and a magnitude 5 earthquake occurred on the Yucca Plain."

"The 'Ame-no-Murakumo' directed-energy devices, all seven units were destroyed and are irreparable."

"Regarding the Allied forces, Sakura Country has surrendered unconditionally, and the Prime Minister has committed ritual suicide."

"South Korea has withdrawn its troops, and six countries from the North Atlantic Organization have requested a suspension of operations."

"As of the moment I am speaking, twenty-three belligerent nations have submitted armistice requests to Long Country through diplomatic channels."

There was silence in the meeting room.

A senator from Texas raised his hand.

"Mr. Secretary, I have only one question."

"Please, go ahead."

"What cards do we have left to play?"

Austin stood on the podium, his mouth opening and then closing.

He looked toward Adam, who was standing against the wall in the corner.

Adam was wearing a gray three-piece suit, his hands in his pockets.

The two locked eyes for two seconds.

Adam tilted his chin, signaling him to continue.

Austin looked away.

"Nuclear weapons." He said the three words.

The meeting room erupted.

"Are you insane?!" A California senator stood up abruptly.

"Their radar can lock onto a B-21 from three hundred kilometers away!"

"Their air defense system can intercept one thousand one hundred missiles in three minutes!"

"You're telling me that if an intercontinental ballistic missile flies over, they won't be able to intercept it?"

Another senator slammed the table and added, "Even if they couldn't intercept it, Long Country has over four hundred nuclear warheads!"

"Mutually assured destruction—do you want to turn the Earth into Mars?"

Austin did not answer; he knew this path was a dead end.

Nuclear weapons were not the answer.

Back in 2016 in the South China Sea, when our two carrier strike groups bore down on them, they dared to stand their ground as a nation, willing to risk war.

Now, they are no longer what they used to be; we cannot beat them in conventional warfare, and we dare not use nuclear weapons.

He looked toward Adam.

Adam had already turned around, pushed open the side door of the meeting room, and walked out.

7:41 PM, Pangu Laboratory, Level B2.

The atomic layer deposition cluster let out a final "hiss" from its exhaust valve.

The output end went quiet.

Su Che stood beside the forty-two-meter-long truss.

The entire skeleton had vanished—not moved away, but invisible to the naked eye.

The fluorescent light shone on it without reflecting; the infrared thermal imager scanned it, but there was no signal; the screen of an electromagnetic environment monitoring device nearby was completely blank.

The massive metal object, forty-two meters long and thirty-five meters in diameter, had become a stretch of "nothingness" in physical space.

Su Che reached out and touched it; his palm met the cold alloy surface.

His sense of touch told him it was still there.

But all detection methods said there was nothing here.

In his mind, a blue and white panel popped up.

[Ding! Main R&D task [She Needs a Stealth Cloak] has been completed!]

[Full-band Metamaterial Stealth Structure upgraded version first section coverage verification passed!]

[Heavy-duty adaptive electronic skin full-area fit rate 100%!]

[Radar, infrared, optical, and high-dimensional quantum state scanning all concealed!]

[Task Reward: 10,000 skill points!]

[Current user accumulated skill points: 10,000 points.]

The ten thousand points arrived.

Su Che did not pause.

He pulled up the system store directly in his consciousness.

[System Prompt: Detected that the user has redeemed the core technology for the Xuan-Nü aerospace drone fighter, but the supporting auxiliary technology/blueprints/plans have not yet been redeemed.]

[The following auxiliary content is available for redemption:]

[Xuan-Nü fighter general design blueprints — 1200 redemption points]

[Aerospace swarm communication protocol — 800 redemption points]

[Airborne directed-energy weapon control module — 1000 redemption points]

[Flight control system blueprints — 600 redemption points]

[Current user accumulated skill points: 10,000 points. Redeem?]

The four items added up to three thousand six hundred.

Ten thousand minus three thousand six hundred left six thousand four hundred.

"Redeem all."

[Ding! Consumed 3600 skill points.]

[Current user accumulated skill points: 6400 points.]

The four sets of blueprints unfolded in his consciousness simultaneously: the 3D assembly diagram of the Xuan-Nü fighter, the swarm hive-style communication topology, the laser cannon mounting and fire control linkage scheme, and the trans-atmospheric flight attitude adaptive control logic.

Su Che closed his eyes and digested the information for thirty seconds.

When he opened his eyes, he had already typed out the parts processing list for the first prototype on the keyboard.

"Qin Lan."

Qin Lan looked up from the terminal.

"Tell Lieutenant General Peng that the stealth cloak for the first section of the skeleton is finished."

Su Che sent the list to the production control system of the automated workshop next door.

"Also, I need five tons of carbon fiber silicon carbide, three tons of niobium-tungsten alloy, and forty sets of quantum-enhanced laser crystals."

He paused.

"The R&D for the Xuan-Nü is about to begin."

Qin Lan stared at him for two seconds, then stood up and walked out.

Level B2 became quiet again.

There was only the low rumble from the automated equipment in the workshop next door starting up.

Su Che leaned back in his chair and rubbed the back of his neck.

Lin Waner walked over, closed the completed reading list, and stuffed it into her pocket.

"Done?"

"One garment is finished."

Su Che looked at the "empty" space in the center of the hall.

"The next step is to wait for the remaining five sections of the skeleton to come off the line simultaneously and let them complete the assembly work automatically."

He raised his hand and issued a pre-assembly command to the automated final assembly platform, then pulled the keyboard over and called up the first subsystem of the Xuan-Nü fighter's general assembly diagram.

The tactical terminal vibrated on the table.

Jiang Yingxue's voice came from the speaker.

"Su Che, Adam has left the Capitol."

Su Che's fingers didn't stop.

"Where did he go?"

"Don't know. His car didn't return to The Pentagon, nor did it return to the Prometheus office."

"The GPS signal disappeared on the Potomac River Bridge."

Su Che finished typing the last line of parameters on the keyboard and pressed Enter.

"Let it monitor itself; there will definitely be a result tomorrow morning."

He pulled his water cup over and took a sip.

Adam had run away, but it didn't look like a surrender; he probably still had one last trump card.

"The instructions have been issued; no need to keep guarding it. You can get a good night's sleep later."

Su Che stretched.

At midnight, Su Che lay on the simple bed in the lab, already fast asleep.

Jiang Yingxue had come in at some point and was still staring at the tracking map on her tablet.

The hydraulic robotic arms in the center of the hall emitted a rhythmic exhaust sound, and the automated workshop sent the remaining five aluminum-lithium alloy verification sections into Level B2 one by one via the underground tracks.

The robotic hands grasped them precisely, cold-pressed and locked them together, the low bass of metal friction echoing in the spacious hall.